word | spirit | world | church
I am pro ‘symbolic’ reading of the Bible. This goes by a few different names, which aren’t entirely contiguous with each other: typology, spiritual reading, the four senses, allegory, maximalism, and more. These things aren’t the same, and they might not all even really be the same neck of the woods, but they are all… Continue reading Bad symbolic reading
This should be a straightforward question, but to answer it we need to make a number of distinctions. This felt like a largely American discourse until fairly recently, but the term is increasingly being used here in the UK as well. The problem is, it’s a big broad sloppy term that means as much or… Continue reading Am I a Christian Nationalist?
We undervalue the importance of hospitality for the Christian life: it’s a central feature of who we are and how we should be behaving because Christianity is practiced at the table. That aphorism is a deliberate double entendre, in fact, it contains two of them. Firstly, when talking about the table, I have two different… Continue reading Christianity is practiced at the table
When God floods the earth in the days of Noah it’s like he turns the clock back on everything that’s happened in the last six chapters of Genesis, and the world reverts to Genesis 1. Before God created and ordered over seven days, the world was water. In Noah’s flood he unmakes and disorders by… Continue reading Decreation
You carry in your pocket a whole world. That hand-sized brick of black glass is a window to anything and everything that there is. You could find out what is known publicly about anyone you meet. You could learn from someone else how they think you should complete any tasks you’re about to do. You… Continue reading The World in your Pocket
What do we mean by ‘forgiveness’? If you’re meant to forgive someone, what does this actually mean? I fear that a lot of the ways we talk about forgiveness in the church are slightly out of step with how the Bible talks about forgiveness. While a thorough exegesis of the relevant passages would be helpful,… Continue reading 3 Kinds of Forgiveness
How do we engage young people in the faith? What can we do to keep them in the church? What will they be interested in and how can we use that to tell them about Jesus? How can we keep their attention? We could throw their phones in the sea. Or, if that’s off the… Continue reading Give them Meat
We read the Bible in two directions, horizontally and vertically. Or, because I really like the word, we read the Bible orthogonally. I’m using some of the language here of Michael Niebauer, who argues for these two angles of reading, horizontal and vertical. I depart from him in the below to some extent, but I’m… Continue reading Orthogonal Reading
Spurgeon’s College has recently closed with immediate effect as its financial situation became untenable. This raises some interesting questions, even for those of us in movements in the UK that rarely use residential training settings. Spurgeon’s had recently become a university, with its own degree awarding powers. It was the only independent evangelical Bible College… Continue reading Training for Ministry
What do we do when those who have helped our theological development take a step in a direction that really concerns us? As I write, there’s just been a bruhaha on X about John Mark Comer changing his mind away from penal substitutionary atonement. To be precise, though little of the storm has been, he… Continue reading When Guides Fall
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